e-Audio, 10:00:00
Narrated by: Christie Lakin & Matt Lanter
Release Date: April 1, 2025
Published by: Hachette Audio
Read from: March 30-April 2, 2025
Stand-alone
Source: Audible (Used old credit)
Content Warning: Dementia, Animal Cruelty, Grief, Child Abuse, Death, Emotional Abuse, Animal Death, Alcoholism, Infidelity
For Readers Interested In: Audio, Contemporary, Romance, Family Diversity, Sparkly Covers, Realistic Fiction, RomanceFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just for the Summer comes a new playful yet deeply emotional contemporary romance.
There might be no such a thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong…
. . . unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date—possibly the best in living history—Samantha is forced to admit the truth, that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to forget her. To remember their night together as a perfect moment, as crushing as that may be.
Only no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life—and even a love—worth remembering.
*MY THOUGHTS*
This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year. And the buzz behind it was so big! I just KNEW it was going to hit. And unfortunately, it did hit…. Just the wrong nerve. And it really made me sad because there was a lot that could be learned or taken from this one.
Ok so what I didn’t like was the ACOTAR references that this held. Normally I don’t care about the pop culture references. I think of it as this is realistic fiction or contemporary fiction. This is what they would be talking about in real life. But the problem comes up when that person is problematic. Why use ACOTAR? We just got people to finally stop using (CW/TW) HP in everything. Now we have to ask for people to stop using this too? Like come on it’s not hard to know that was a controversial series. You could have easily picked another yt woman.
The only reason I didn’t DNF this at the beginning was the dementia care rep. I currently have an aunt in law going through this very thing and the family is thinking the very same way as the family in this book. I felt like I was living through them. I cried a lot of this book because I noticed some of the same things we were currently witnessing. Jimenez really handled this book with care and I appreciated that aspect of this.
The other part of this I enjoyed was the long distance part. As a former long distance girlie I thought this was cute. Granted we were only a few miles up the highway, but it was still a bother to not be around the other every day. I think Abby also did well with this aspect of it too. The longing in between days, the times when you’re surprised etc. I thought this was done well as well.
But even still, I just couldn’t get over the blatant use of this whole ACOTAR thing. There was no reason. And I couldn’t ignore that. I really hope this isn’t going to become a thing with her. This really did effect my love of this book. No matter how the care was or the long distance yearning, it wasn’t enough for me to ignore the terrible that came before it.
Overall, I give this
I went back and forth with this rating until I landed on this one. I can’t in good conscience give this a likeable rating when I only liked two things out of it.